Six Feet Of The Country By Nadine Gordimer Summary
Nadine Gordimer’s "Six Feet of the Country" explores the systemic cruelty of apartheid South Africa through the story of a black laborer's desperate attempt to bury his brother, who died illegally on a white-owned farm. The narrative highlights the dehumanization of black individuals under apartheid, as bureaucratic indifference results in the wrong body being returned to the family after a costly, sacrificial, and ultimately futile effort to secure a proper burial.
: The farm foreman. He is dignified, intelligent, and highly respected by his peers. Petrus navigates the oppressive white legal system with quiet resilience, using the narrator as a tool to achieve basic human dignity for his family. 🔑 Major Themes 1. The Devaluation of Black Lives six feet of the country by nadine gordimer summary
To his surprise, the farmworkers pool their meager savings together, and Petrus produces the £20 in crumpled notes. Reluctantly, the narrator drives to the city, pays the bureaucrats, and arranges for the coffin to be delivered to the farm. The Cruel Revelation Nadine Gordimer’s "Six Feet of the Country" explores
Because the brother was an undocumented migrant, his presence on the farm was illegal under apartheid law. The narrator's immediate reaction is not grief or sympathy, but irritation regarding the legal administrative hassle this death will cause him with the local authorities. The Struggle for a Proper Burial He is dignified, intelligent, and highly respected by
The central conflict begins when Petrus, one of the farm’s trusted workers, informs Lerice that his brother is very sick. The brother had traveled illegally from Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) without a pass to find work in South Africa. By the time the narrator and Lerice go to check on him in the crowded workers' quarters, the young man has already died of pneumonia. Bureaucratic Indifference
Petrus comes to the narrator again. This time, his request is different. He explains that in his tribal custom (the story vaguely suggests he is Xhosa or a similar group), it is essential for a person to be buried in the soil of his home, not in a strange, foreign place like the town’s pauper’s grave. The family has sent money from the reserves. Petrus wants to retrieve Johannes’s body—or at least have it exhumed—so that it can be transported back home for a proper burial. All he needs is the narrator’s help: a letter, a car, a voice of authority.
The narrator and his wife, Lerice, purchase a smallholding about ten miles outside Johannesburg, seeking to change something in themselves. The narrator works in the city during the week and retreats to the farm on weekends, where he feels a sense of "triumph" and safety from the "tension" of urban life, which for white South Africans means "the guns under the white men’s pillows and the burglar bars on the white men’s windows". He and Lerice have several Black employees who live on the farm, including a worker named Petrus . The narrator maintains a paternalistic, detached relationship with them, believing their arrangement to be mutually respectful and comfortable.
